You have lost your database. Even if you did a full online backup plus archivelog, it did not contain all the archivelogs and RMAN did not tell you.

There is more than one way to reduce this annoyance :

1) don’t backup archivelogs during full backup
2) don’t delete archivelog backups done during a full backup
3) report any archivelog backups that run during a full. Either by looking in the RMAN dictionary or in your house logfiles
4) do offline backup for long term archives
5) don’t trust RMAN

7 Replies to “Can you restore from a full online backup ?”

Hi Laurent,
I was discussing that with a colleague recently. The solution (1) was implemented at customer site but I don’t like it because it means that when backup database is long then archived logs are not backed up and RPO is not fulfilled.
I proposed something like your solution (3) but using ‘RESTORE PREVIEW’ after the backup in order to list the required files. I always prefer to rely on RMAN to find the required backup pieces rather than guess from file name or date.
Regards,
Franck.

no backup of archived log for thread 1 with sequence 27 found to restore
no backup of archived log for thread 1 with sequence 29 found to restore
no backup of archived log for thread 1 with sequence 30 found to restore

This works awesomely good as you have N*24h redo logs for any potential DataGuard gap plus it’s turbo mode for any potential +DATA/datafiles restore (as there is no need to restore archived logs as they are already in place). Happy to listen if you have bad experiences with such implementation.